


This horror; this blood-clot in my head

by jondiesattheend



Category: X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, Erik Hunting Nazis, Erik Lehnsherr deserves better, Gen, Murder, Parental Death, Suicidal ideation very briefly implied; non-explicit, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 08:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jondiesattheend/pseuds/jondiesattheend
Summary: The years have not been kind to him.





	This horror; this blood-clot in my head

Erik is fourteen and his screams swallow all other sound as he’s thrown into a windowless room that becomes his prison for the next five years. He can’t sit shiva, not here, but for three days he doesn’t sleep, can’t eat, won’t drink. He prays, frantic whispers in the dead of night, too quiet for anyone to hear.

He opens a former SS officer’s throat with a blade, their faces close together, hissing his victory. The dead man stares at him in open-mouthed horror. Blood spills down his hands, his wrists, his forearms. The Nazi’s mouth opens and closes; blood bubbles from the gash in his throat and he doesn't make a sound. What his last words were, Erik doesn't care.

He cuts men down like grass, carves a bloody path through Europe, leaves dozens of bodies in his wake. One kill bleeds into another, bleeds into another, but he never loses count because he was never keeping it in the first place. It doesn’t matter how many Nazis are left dead in restaurants, in streets, in their homes. There’s only one monster worth dwelling on, and Erik hasn’t found him yet. But he will. He _will_. 

He does.

The ending is everything and nothing like he wanted it to be. It’s Schmidt’s cold corpse and a coin wet with blood. It’s silence and knowing Charles was right and so was he: peace was never an option, and killing Shaw didn't change that. But the monster is dead. His mother is avenged. That should be enough.

(It isn’t.)

Because he’s never thought about what might come after this, never imagined his life extending past the point of Shaw’s death. Killing him didn’t bring his mother back and it didn’t mend the chasm in his chest where something good used to be, and Erik doesn’t know what to do with that so he does what he does best and turns to war.

The years are not kind to him and the war never stops; it just changes faces.

But... Erik in thunderstorms is a sight to behold, his arms spread wide against the sky, his head tipped back and face tilted up to the rain. Power hums around him like a swarm of locusts and in these moments he feels invincible again, feels like power made flesh, like he’s pushing coin through skull again. He feels like he could save the dying and revive the dead.

But the years are still not kind to him, and war’s face is the government, war's face is a false god, war's face is his own rage and fear reflected back at him.

He's old and tired and he doesn’t look at mirrors anymore, doesn’t recognise the people he sees there; the frightened child with a shaven head and a coin branded to his palm; the haunted man who swallowed death whole in the winter and came alive in the spring, a wedding ring gleaming on his finger; the snarling, vengeful thing that tore its way through Europe to sink a coin into bone to find it wasn’t what it should have been, what he’d wanted it to be.

A monster lives under that helmet now, hatred and fear dug into the lines of its face. His eyes are a dead shark’s; his rage swallows worlds and snuffs out life wherever it goes. He can’t remember when his name became synonymous with terror and corruption, or if it was ever anything else.

Erik stopped counting deaths a long time ago, but this one- this one he’s been waiting for.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my Tumblr and edited a little; I kept the original stream-of-thought writing style, but changed the lowercase. Comments are deeply appreciated, as I'm new to fic-posting and could use the encouragement. Ideas for future fics are also appreciated! You can leave requests here or send them to my tumblr (jondiesattheend).


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